6 Fictional Languages You Can Really Learn

The Tower of Babel, oil painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1563; in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.Courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, ViennaMany of the languages that are made up for television and books are just gibberish. However, a rare few have been developed into fully functioning living languages, some even by linguistic professionals and professors. If learning French and Spanish at school wasn’t quite your cup of tea, you may want to try one of these on for size. Who knows when a few words of tlhIngan Hol may come in handy?

Alienese: Futurama

Alienese (also just called “Alien Language”) is perhaps one of the easiest languages on this list to learn—if you’re a mathematician, that is. The language, intended to be used for hidden in-jokes on the animated show Futurama, began as a simple substitution alphabet, with 26 characters that directly corresponded to the English alphabet. However, that proved too easy for fans, so a second form of the language was devised, using math instead. Each symbol has a numerical value, and messages are decoded into English thusly: first, translate the first symbol directly (0=A, 1=B, etc.), then for remaining letters subtract the previous symbol’s value (if the result is less than 0, add 26).

Lapine: Watership Down

Richard Adams’s Watership Down is the tale of a colony of rabbits looking for a new home. The rabbits speak a language known as Lapine, which is meant to sound “fluffy.” While only a few dozen words of Lapine appear in the text, fans have since developed the language into a functional one with distinct grammar and vocabulary.Os e layth Frithyeer hyaones, on layth zayn yayn dahloil. - If it’s sunny today, we’ll go and find dandelions

Na’vi: Avatar

A scene from Avatar (2009).Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation/The Kobal Collection

For his 2009 blockbuster film Avatar, director James Cameron wanted his alien race, the Na’vi, to be a fully developed concept, complete with their own working language. He enlisted the help of linguist Paul Frommer, who created an extensive vocabulary and grammar for the giant blue beings. Fans quickly caught on and, with help from Frommer, continued to develop the language.Fayvrrtep fìtsenge lu kxanì. Fìpoti oel tspìyang, fte tìkenong liyevu aylaru. - These demons are forbidden here. I will kill this one as a lesson to the others.

Dothraki: Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire

George R.R. Martin, in his A Song of Ice and Fire book series, established the nomadic horse-rearing Dothraki people. In the books Martin included very few words of the Dothraki language, but for the HBO television series David Peterson of the Language Creation Society was hired to turn those words into a complete lexicon. As the Dothraki people’s lives depend first and foremost on their horses, Peterson created the language to reflect this close relationship with horse riding and rearing. Dothraki is frequently spoken by actors on the show, and many fans are learning, too.Hash yer dothrae chek asshekh? - How are you today? (Do you ride well today?)

Klingon: Star Trek

Klingon is one of the most well-known fictional languages. It was created by linguist Marc Okrand as the language of the warrior Klingon race on the television show Star Trek. Okrand published several books about the language, and an organization known as the Klingon Language Institute has a quarterly journal dedicated to it. Fans use the language to conduct marriage ceremonies and to write songs, and there has even been an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet published in Klingon. While Klingon does have its own alphabet, the language is usually transliterated into English.nuqDaq ’oH puchpa’’e’ – Where is the bathroom?

Elvish: The works of J.R.R. Tolkien

J.R.R. Tolkien.AP Images

J.R.R. Tolkien, a philologist and lexicographer, began creating his Elvish languages before he started on any of his well-known works, such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. There are actually two forms of Elvish commonly learned by fans: Quenya, or high Elvish, and Sindarin, both based loosely on Finnish and Welsh, two languages Tolkien himself studied. And these can be subdivided into different dialects. There are even different forms of Elvish script—one of which you may have seen on the One Ring featured in The Lord of the Rings films.Elen síla lumenn’
omentielvo – A star shines on
the hour of our meeting.